Film Of The Month: Beasts Clawing At Straws, A Bloody Good Korean Noir About Chasing Money

PUBLISHED August 14th, 2020 05:00 am | UPDATED July 17th, 2024 09:29 pm

Blood money spurts to grisly new heights in Beasts Clawing At Straws, a delightfully dark comedy by South Korean director Kim Yong-hoon. Opening with mysterious close-ups of a Louis Vuitton bag stuffed fat with cash, Kim’s debut feature takes us hot on its trail of gore, greed, and general wackiness. Like many of the Korean films taking the international market by storm, this neo-noir offers a scathing look at society’s obsession with wealth – though it’s bloody good for the hilarity alone.

It all begins when The Bag is stuffed into the locker of a sauna hotel in Pyeongtaek (65km from Seoul), and subsequently discovered by desk clerk Joong-man (Bae Seong-woo). Burdened by bankruptcy and an ailing mother, his life would be turned around by this seemingly unclaimed moneybag – a fact he is acutely aware of.

Cut to a couple of other characters for whom money, too, would be a magic wand in their woeful lives. Tae-young (played by glib-tongued hearthrob Jung Woo-sung) is being harassed by loansharks after his girlfriend borrowed money and vanished; bar hostess Mi-ran (the ethereal Shin Hyun-bin) has no means to escape her abusive marriage. Far from being helpless prey, though, each shows themselves eerily capable of becoming sharks too at the sniff of cash – cheating and insurance-fueled murder are all par for the course.

Through an explosive chain of double-crossing, swindling, and comic chance, the fateful bag of money slips from hand to hand. No character seems able to hold on to it, no matter what their kill count – not Yeon-hee (Jeon Do-yeon at her femme fatale best), Tae-young’s slippery girlfriend with a tiger shark tattoo and the shark’s cannibalistic instincts to match; nor Mi-ran, whose blood-soaked arc of empowerment is abruptly cut short. As things escalate into absurdism, a sense of nihilism sneaks up on us – is self-interest at all costs the way up for Korea’s unhappy middle class, or does it only trap them in a vicious cycle?

If you’re a Pulp Fiction fan, this film might ring a delicious bell. Like Tarantino’s oddball masterpiece, Beasts Clawing at Straws is split – somewhat confusingly at first – into a series of non-linear chapters. Only belatedly, with an uncanny shock of déjà vu, do we realise we’re going back to where it all began. Circling round like a noose, it’s a film that conceals sharp questions about the endless chase for money in a dog-eat-dog society. The greatest irony in the film is that (mini-spoiler) no one ever manages to use the money – it remains omnipresent and always just within reach.

With gritty shots of Pyongtaek’s rain-swept streets, and a cast that knows how to dance along the line between goofiness and darkness, Beasts Clawing for Straws makes for a rollicking romp. If you can stomach its appetite for intestine-eating threats, backstabbing, and just plain ol’ stabbing, we recommend devouring it this weekend.

Beasts Clawing At Straws is screening through August 2020 at The Projector, #05-00 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road, Singapore 199589. The film is also available for streaming on Viu. 

All film stills courtesy of Beasts Clawing at Straws/ The Projector